Anger most dangerous

With sincere sadness, I read Steve Skojec of OnePeterFive‘s essay Against Crippled Religion. I had heard that the piece was making the rounds all over the Catholic web, and so I finally got around to reading it. It is evident that not only Mr. Skojec is experiencing a spiritual crisis, but so is most of Traditionalist Catholicism. There are many reasons for this, and I think it’s important from the get-go that we seek to understand these before we come to simplistic explanations for what is happening.

The “straw that broke the camel’s back” in the case of Skojec was that his children were denied sacraments on the part of his parish Priest. Truth be told, I don’t understand the logic of the Priest or what is really going on there. I want to have sympathy for Mr. Skojec, but at the same time, I have learned from hard experience that there are always (at least) two sides to every story, and that, quite frankly, there is no such thing as purely objective communication among mortals. Whatever the particulars of that story are, this has caused an eruption of anger from Mr. Skojec. Anger like that is usually indicative of great grief, and I think if we were to ask him and people who feel like him, we would find a deep sadness at the bottom of the maelstrom.

There are a few points I would like to address in what Mr. Skojec said that I hope will in some small way pour healing balm on the wounds, or at least, set the broken piece together like a cast so it can heal.

The first thing I felt and thought when reading Mr. Skojec’s article was how relatable it was, both to my experience, and that of many others. At the risk of sounding self-referential, it sounded a lot like the essay I wrote in 2019, The Ongoing Clerical Abuse Crisis. My point, which received a lot of positive feedback across the world, was that the real clerical abuse crisis of the present time is not done by Priests, but to Priests. Not only are confirmed cases of abuse by Priests down worldwide, but even accusations are down. Most of the problems currently facing dioceses and religious communities are the result of the opening of cases regarding crimes committed decades ago. The parallel crisis, which draws no attention from the media, is the feeling of disillusionment and hopelessness present among so much of the clergy. Mr. Skojec complains that the lay faithful have absolutely no ‘control’ or ‘power’ in the Church. The irony of this is that, if you were to ask the rank-and-file Priest, he would also tell you that he feels the same way. The Bishops in their turn would probably say something similar, as many of the good ones try to navigate the suffocating groupthink and bureaucracy present in Bishop’s Conferences and Chanceries. I am sure that many feel that they react far more to the times than they shape them. All around, people express helplessness about those things which they cannot change, without taking stock of those things which they can, and therefore should. We each have our place in the arena.

What I found most disconcerting about the article’s sentiments, however, were sentences like “There is. No. Shepherd.” Of course there is a Shepherd, and that is Jesus Christ. At the same though, it is so tempting to feel that the Church is utterly leaderless. Priests also feel that way in many places. For instance, it is common to hear well-intentioned lay faithful say how happy they are when a Priest speaks bold truths. However, very few are willing to come to the rescue if that Priest were to lose his office, if the Bishop were to remove him due to complaints. All people trying to be faithful to the Gospel of Christ feel that their back is up against the wall. Add to that the not-negligible amounts of psychological abuse and gaslighting which is happening so frequently, and the stage is set for anxiety, rage and dread.

Mr. Skojec makes a lot of great observations about the current state of ‘Trad Culture’. I wholeheartedly echo his observation on the Manichean tendencies of these individuals. I found sadly amusing and enlightening his description of Archbishop Viganò as “Catholic Q Anon”. Like many of us, Mr. Skojec laments that what began as a prophetic call to account degenerated into an oracle of punditry. But there is something more at the root of what Mr. Skojec observes which I think is being missed. It is the reality that we live in a profoundly fallen world, and no one in the Church is exempt from this fact. A certain type of personality, with noble sentiments and sincerity, is drawn naturally to what he or she feels is beautiful, good or true. For many, these are the sacred realities which the Church embodies and for which she stands throughout the centuries, albeit imperfectly. However, much like in an experienced marriage or in a child coming to adulthood, part of the journey to maturity is coming to understand that your spouse or parent is imperfect. And then, with even more incisive power, one day you look in the mirror and come to understand that you are just like them. How many middle aged people tell me they are “just like their old man” and so on. What people come to idealize, they tend to idolize. Or perhaps it is the other way around. This is natural, and maybe even healthy. I don’t think we are capable of falling in love, or forming friendships, if there isn’t a discrete ‘something’ about people or institutions which draws us, temporally making us blind to other defects, or willing to overlook them. However, the true crisis comes when the idolized becomes the despised, when the blinders come off. The person who idealized feels betrayed, even though the fault was in his own optics. Or, to put it as Mr. Skojec did, such a person lacked “epistemic humility”; as much as we may know of the world, other people, and ourselves, we never see it all. And that’s part of the point. We aren’t meant to understand everyone, but we are meant to love everyone.

In this same vein, I think many people in the traditionalist world are guilty of what we in the psychological world call “splitting“. It is the dividing the world into clear categories of orthodoxy/heterodoxy, orthopraxis/heteropraxis, good/evil, etc. No one with an ounce of logic or ethical cohesiveness would deny that these things, of course, exist. However, they almost never are fully realized in the world. Splitting is often found in individuals who suffered from abuse, and especially the trauma of abandonment. Splitting in a sense is a sort of ‘white-knighting’ the world, to create metaphysical and psychological stopgaps to maintain cohesion in one’s worldview. There is always someone on the horizon coming to save us from the disorder and chaos we perceive: the tragic irony is that such an approach is a form of psychological illusion akin to most optical illusions. Temporal realities are always perceived in relative terms, as relationships between objects. Is there an objective truth and goodness by which we can direct our behavior and beliefs? Absolutely. But the journey to more perfectly find that is mined with failure and disappointment. Per crucem ad lucem. Παθηματα μαθηματα. That which is suffered is that which is truly learned.

Almost all traditionalist parishes, and even the Eastern Rites, are filled with disaffected Latin Rite Catholics. They feel, and in many cases rightfully so, that they were abandoned in their right to be nourished by sound doctrine and reverent worship. I have lost count on the amount of Priests in the FSSP or in the Byzantine Rite who have told me that their Churches would not be open if it were not for the disillusionment of their parishioners with their rites and churches of origin. When these people come together, it becomes almost like a social group for divorcees, but instead of complaining about the spouse they lost, and ‘how bad’ he or she was, they tend to concentrate their bad experiences with the Church, and this becomes the seed bed of the proverbial ‘bitter trad’ phenomenon. Unfortunately, though, although they may find solace away from the liturgical and doctrinal insanity of other places, they insufficiently appreciate that they have not exactly entered the land following with milk and honey.

I see this phenomenon as akin to the debate of Biblical scholarship about the historicity of the Book of Joshua and the Book of Judges. The Israelites in entering the Promised Land are portrayed by the former as having a nearly unstoppable march to inherit the land promised to them. The Philistines are routed, and the Israelites, the divinely appointed conquerors, take over. Yet the Book of Judges presents the Israelites’ journey into the Promised Land as a time of uncertainty and chaos, with set backs and triumphs. God does raise up leaders, yes, and these do lead the people. Yet the vast majority of them are flawed. Archaeologists have concluded from their findings that the Book of Judges’ account is probably more accurate historically. But at the same time, the Book of Joshua could be said to be more accurate theologically. The fact that these two books exist side by side, much like the two creation narratives in Genesis, demonstrates the Holy Spirit’s desire for us to understand ourselves, history, and the wider world always with nuance and in context. It belongs to the devils and to imbeciles to perceive the world only in one way. To see the world from birds eye view – that is divine.

Which brings me to the Manichaeanism present in the traditionalist moral panic, which was stirred into a fever pitch with the fall of Cardinal McCarrick. As I wrote in my essay I Support Father McCarrick, even his case is not one of complete and unabridged moral depravity. McCarrick had some real achievements in his long ecclesiastical career, in both the moral and the social order. I believed, and still believe, he should have maintained his clerical status, albeit divested of all privileges and honorifics. As a private and public gesture, he could have healed the Church more as a penitent cleric than as a layman. This is something I also wrote about in an essay Prisoners, or our love for the guilty. As Christians who claim to obey the call to repentance and conversion, and also experience the redemption and healing found in Christ, our unwillingness to manifest grace to fallen sinners is a deep betrayal of what should constitute a fundamental Christian conviction.

Which brings me to Mr. Skojec’s profound sense of disillusionment. It is totally understandable. In the past several years I have heard so many tales of abuse, heartbreak and hopelessness, that it would drive anyone to the same sort of crisis. Certainly, no believer worth his or her salt can ever say that they haven’t had a dark night of sorts. But there are three tips I would offer to anyone in the same boat as Mr. Skojec. I have found these remedies to be extremely powerful in maintaining faith, hope and charity in my own life, and in giving me light in dark times.

First, come to terms with the very basic fact that, as a baseline, humanity is a mixed bag. This is a form of managing expectations. Our motivations are mixed, our pasts are mixed, our personalities are mixed. And so are you. Yet God somehow loves these messy people. He loves me, and he loves you. And if he loves you and me in spite of ourselves, we must love others in spite of themselves. Once, living with a very difficult Priest, I was praying in front of the tabernacle, complaining to Our Lord about how badly I felt and how hurt I was. I heard in my heart the words, “I have not called you to judge him. I have called you to love him.” These words have helped me to remain more calm and charitable than I otherwise would have been. Even though I may be upset or angry, that does not give me the right to inflict harm on someone else. God will sort us out in his time, much like Our Lord reminds us in several parables. The wheat and the tares don’t just grow in the world. They are found in every human heart. Mr. Skojec expresses dismay especially that people who appeared to be bastions of orthodoxy and goodness had skeletons in their closet. That is not an exception to humanity. I daresay, it is the rule. But human falls do not invalidate human goodness, let alone divine goodness. Why utilize such two-dimensional conceptual tools to understand people? Can it not be possible that some of the Priests that Mr. Skojec mentions were men who, on any given day, did a lot of good work for the Church and for souls? Could they have been motivated, like all of us can be, by the action of divine grace, as well as by temptation?

Second, study history. St. John Henry Newman said that to be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant. I would also add that to be deep in history is to cease to be carried adrift by every passing crisis. Just like an experienced professional or an adult tends to react more calmly when problems arise, so too a person with more knowledge of history can absorb the events of the current time with greater equanimity. This is one reason why I think cultural Marxists seek to destroy monuments and statues: because they embody our social memory, and that helps us to understand and contextualize the present. Marxists, like the Devil, seek to keep us always in the present, and always angry, because people who have no sense of past or future have no sense of identity or stability, and someone who is always angry can be easily manipulated to impulsive action. I often laugh when people, especially in the media, pass off such-and-such an event as “unprecedented” or “unique” when I know that something similar only happened a few decades (or mere years/months) ago. Getting older makes this tragic amusement even more palpable.

Third, develop a deeper appreciation of the wonder of grace, both personally and in the world. Everything truly is grace. The postmodern world is becoming increasingly unhinged as we lose this. Granted, it is very difficult to accept this when we are called to extend grace precisely to those people who have offended us, even gravely. But that is one of the hallmarks of the Christian faith that so astounded the pagan world when we came on the scene two millennia ago. Priests and people alike need mercy and grace. Defining people merely by their sins is diabolical, and the very etymological definition of ‘Satan’. I always find interesting the idea that when we go before God for our particular judgment, the saints who have gone before us, along with the angels, will both judge us and advocate for us. In a sense, God has ‘stacked the court’ in our favor, and is delighted when we, redeemed sinners, offer prayers and sacrifice for other sinners. We imitate his Son, who, godly, gave his life for the ungodly. The more we uplift others in the order of grace, the more we will find ourselves uplifted.

I think at the root of so much of the traditionalist discontent is a fundamental detachment from the reality of grace. We expect ecclesiological realities to be as cut-and-dry, as black-as-white as metaphysical ones. I often resent it when I hear older people say that young people, and young clergy, flee to traditional liturgy and traditional belief because they have a neurotic need for ‘certainty’. I often find this to be a convenient way for them to absolve themselves from the incoherence and chaos they inflicted upon the Church and society at large. Yet just like most criticisms, there is often a kernel of truth. In spite of all the incense, bells, beautiful vestments and chant, if there is no grace, no spiritual charity and mercy, the whole edifice is rotted from within. Some Church commentators have said that the renewal of the Church will come from a fusion of charismatics and traditionalists. I heard that first almost twenty years ago, and although it puzzled me then, I believe it now more than ever. We need structure, dogma, discipline and worship. But we also need tenderness, mercy, understanding and warmth. Are these values going to be in tension? Yes. But we need both to avoid both the zeal of bitterness, and resigned apathy.

Like so many traditionalist outlets since the pontificate of Pope Francis began, OnePeterFive has been a semi-regular IV drip of bitterness into the spirits of many Catholics. Not that the Pope or Bishops are somehow beyond the scope of criticism. There are a lot of problems in the Church and in the actions of our leaders. But we don’t have control over those, nor will we be judged for them. I have my own spiritual garden to tend, and if I can make sure my own lamp is filled with oil, perhaps I can share some of what I have with someone else. Seven years of near constant bad news, (let alone the whole of history) from the interminable synods to the Pachimama, is an inexhaustible and exhausting source of grievance. But to borrow a line from Our Lord, “What is that to you? Follow me.”